


Of Universes and Pillow Forts

by alphaenterprise



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M, and blanket forts, and boys being stupid about their feelings, and stargazing, for those who need less angst and more happy, this is literally just fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 03:17:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphaenterprise/pseuds/alphaenterprise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is infinity in the night and content in the cold, and a happiness that flickers to life in the stars and the deep of winter that is true to its core.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Universes and Pillow Forts

**Author's Note:**

> crossposted from my tumblr (alphajaeger!) and written for liz ♥♥
> 
> this is my first work on ao3, so i hope it's up to snuff and i didn't miss correcting any of the lowercase letters that i use constantly ;u;!
> 
> it’s kind of au-ish because i’m not entirely sure if they’ve already run pitfall yet, jaegers still exist, and chuck is… a little weird. the pov is different in this one from my usual so i’m just playing fast and loose with the timeline ;u; it turned sort of introspective and weird in the way of characterization, but it wrote itself when i tried to write otherwise

 

When the days get cold and the inhabitants of the Shatterdome begin to don thicker clothes, Raleigh Becket begins layering his sweaters and transforms into someone that is warmer. Almost strangely so, because he isn't unwarm, but there is a new air to him that is ushered on the chilled winds of winter. There is a liveliness to him that is marrow-deep and sends him bounding across the 'dome like an overly large dog for anyone who has errands to run. His skin loses some of the pallor that had come to his cheeks and the muted, endless sadness that occasionally settled in his eyes has taken wing on days that are especially cold.

 

It makes Mako smile and laugh and shrug away the heaviness in her heart that the chill brings, especially when an only slightly winded Raleigh bounds up to her, cheeks pink as can be, to push a thermos of hot chocolate into her hands and sniff and grin while combating a runny nose. He is full of energy that he lacks during the summer months and has even begun to don the worn, ragged heather grey scarf that followed him to Hong Kong from Sitka.

 

Everyone asks, quiet mumbles and questioning glances that are edged with curiosity more than anything because it is literally impossible for anyone to hate Raleigh Becket. It’s their first winter with him in Hong Kong and none of the old Gipsy Danger techs can seem to shed any light on it, perhaps because they're unwilling, grizzled and loyal to their atoms, or it is equally possible that they haven't a clue.

 

So it's a hair shy of surprising when Raleigh almost crashes face-first into Chuck, rocketing across the Jaeger bay's immense space with more grace than the blonde has ever shown. He manages to catch himself somehow, grinning from ear to ear and pink from his neck to his ears, and is in Chuck's space with only inches between their noses.

 

"Hey." Raleigh beams, breathless and unconcerned that his breath smells like chocolate and coffee and surprisingly not-unpleasant, and that he inhales when Chuck exhales and that the situation is comfortably intimate. His sweater is cream today, knitted in an old-fashioned cable-knit and with what must have been the thickest yarn that Chuck could imagine, gathered close to his neck and radiating warmth so much that it's palpable.

 

"What the hell, mate?" Chuck drawls, dropping the torque wrench in his hands on a nearby rolling cart. The handle is smeared with grease and dust and his palms are blackened because of it, but that doesn't stop Raleigh from grabbing his hands and turning them face up without a single care as to how dirty they were. A massive canister is dropped in his grip, emblazoned with the PPDC logo as everything seemed to be, and Raleigh is speaking with even cheer, easy and without any effort at all.

 

"You've been working here for hours." he says with a shrug, and Chuck damns him when his smile is so bright that it should be impossible. Raleigh pats his newly-smudged hands on his pants, thankfully the same dark black as ever, and sits down in a rolling stool with an easy, relaxed slump to his posture. He scoots it around in slow motions, the wheels unhindered on the smooth concrete flooring, and looks everything in the world as if unburdened by the stresses of his past. "Figured you'd want some food."

 

Curiosity piqued, Chuck flips the latch on the thermos and sniffs, resolutely ignoring the expression of triumph that crawls onto Raleigh's dumb face. It’s soup, obviously, and he kicks himself mentally for not deciding that some number of minutes ago. A spoon is tucked on some tiny pocket between the layers of the container, wrapped in napkins and a tiny, tied bow of all things. It brings feeling into his fingers though, and with it comes pins and needles that encourage a tiny hissing sigh from his chest.

 

"Television static?" Raleigh chirps, head tilted as he fiddles with bits that are strewn here and there to occupy his hands. There is a clicking sound in his teeth, unnatural and almost concerning, and it puts a feeling of unsettlement in Chuck's stomach until he sees a flash of a hard candy and he focuses instead on what was just said to him.

 

"Television static?" he echoes, frowning and clutching the thermos protectively when Raleigh's hands invade his peripheral vision.

 

"Let it go, trust me." comes the huff, fondly exasperated, and Raleigh's calloused fingers are pushing the numb feeling into nonexistence. Warmth is chased back into Chuck's bones and he is vaguely aware of the patterns that are left in the grit on his skin, but outweighing all of that is that the pilot in front of him is swaddled up like a walking quilt and is still clutching onto his dirty, filament stained hands with the most ridiculous, stupid smile on his face. "When your hands or legs or something go numb, it's like tv static except in your body and not on a tv."

 

Chuck grumbles something unintelligible and instead focuses on the fact that Raleigh enunciates the 'tee' in 'tv' instead of the 'vee', and cannot help the fact that this is something that sits warm in his chest like the growing warmth in his arms. And damn him, Raleigh is right; he hasn't seen much tv static, but he knows that the feeling is some sort of strange personification of it. "Yeah yeah, gimme my hands, you idiot." he mutters, snatching up a stained blue rag from his pile of tools to only halfway wipe off his hands. Raleigh is laughing to himself, easy and light, and pats his hands on his pants before cleaning off the sides of the thermos. "Yer gonna ruin your pants, Becket, goddamn."

 

Raleigh just laughs still, like he's full of giddy joy even with Kaiju at their doorstep, and throws a stray bolt at Chuck's head with amiable ease. If Chuck was one for taking photos, then he could imagine picking a snapshot of Raleigh like this and comparing it to one of him in the middle of the year. Chuck hates conundrums and unsolvable problems, and he feels like sometimes Raleigh falls into those categories every single hour of every single day.

 

"Don't freeze out here." jerks him out of his train of thought, legitimately concerned and painfully caring, and Raleigh bumps their shoulders on the way out before leaving Chuck a handful of his hard candies on his workspace.

 

Halfway across the Shatterdome's huge floorspace, Raleigh turns around and puts his hand up to wave back at Chuck when their eyes meet. He's effervescent, a beacon and a star all rolled into one, and when Chuck turns away with a fond eye-roll, the bright candy on the table is reminiscent of a constellation.

 

Raleigh Becket, he realizes fifteen minutes later as he's finishing the still warm soup, looks five years younger and an entire world happier, and it does things to Chuck's stomach that he isn't sure about.

 

Their camaraderie transforms into something uncomplicated and fluid somehow, someway, and it unsettles Chuck almost as much as it makes him content. Raleigh is honestly kind, honestly generous, honestly everything and anything, and the thing about it is that these traits are not unordinary for him. Instead, they are everyday, irrefutable pieces of Raleigh Becket that were written in stone and poured in concrete and made up who the American was just as intrinsically as the fact that he's a Jaeger pilot.

 

Chuck works, fiddles with machinery and electronics and Jaeger pieces, and Raleigh talks, even though talks isn't quite the right word for it. He yammers and blathers and continues on incessantly, but all of those words sound too negative when Chuck thinks them. The stories are emotional, articulated with gestures and expressions and voices if necessary, and Raleigh goes through what must be two handfuls of candies, two cups of coffee, and some number of hours before he realizes that he's commandeered one of Chuck's socket wrenches for his tale and that it's dark outside.

 

"Y'woulda liked ta' take my head off." Chuck snorts, half humored and half honest, and Raleigh just grins and shrugs sheepishly while spinning the tool around on his fingers deftly.

 

"I would not!" he laughs, tossing the heavy metal between his hands as if to make a point, "I like you too much for that." An errant elbow later and candy wrappers are scattered all around the work station, crinkling and colourful, and Raleigh has the decency to look embarrassed.

 

"Ain't gonna pick 'emselves up." Chuck rolls his eyes, but it doesn't stop him from grinning as he stoops to gather them neatly. They are flattened perfectly, past wrinkles all but gone, and Raleigh is stacking them in a neat, even pile with a focus that is given only to piloting. Chuck manages to pick up at least ten wrappers, and by the seventh one, he's noticing writing on them for some reason.

 

So he crams it into his pocket, casual as can be, and lets Raleigh weigh the wrappers down with some spare nuts and bolts without batting an eye.

 

"Guess it's getting really late if I'm making such a mess." Raleigh snorts, wry and amused, and hooks his thumbs into his pockets while bobbing back and forth on the balls of his feet. "Y'wanna go up to the top of the 'dome? check out the stars?"

 

"Naw, mate." Chuck says, already spinning numbers and torque figures in his mind as he picks out another scuffed set of wrenches from the toolbag that he kept squirreled away by his nook. When Raleigh visibly deflates in his peripheral vision, he finds himself bumping shoulders with the other man in a way that is too friendly, too different, but makes sense to do. "Oi, I just have a lot of work to do. Quit lookin' like a kicked pup."

 

"Shut it, Hansen." comes the retort, but a feeling of victory settles in Chuck's chest when his ears pinken beneath his flyaway hair. "So when, then?" And damn Raleigh for looking so pleased that he rhymed, god, he really is five.

 

"Get back to me tomorrow, 'n I’ll figure something out." Chuck mumbles, and nearly drops his tools when Raleigh smiles, beatific and beautiful, and stuffs another handful of candy into Chuck's pocket. "Where the hell're you keepin' all this?" he manages as the blonde takes off across the bay, hides the heat in the back of his neck by hunching his shoulders, and never admits that he smiles and sticks the hard candies to the insides of his teeth as he works.

 

When he drags himself to his bunk after tinkering and busting knuckles on metal and engines and trying to prove the techs wrong because they aren't the ones piloting Striker, Chuck climbs wearily into his bed without even bothering to dry off completely from his shower. Max whuffs and grumbles, quiet huffings that warm Chuck's bones, and groans when he's scooted to the side to make room for his human. Chuck smothers a grin in the wrinkles of Max's neck and hunkers in beside him and is asleep before he thinks about anything else except blue eyes and blonde hair and stars.

 

The red numbers projected on the wall read 02:17 when Chuck flings an arm over the edge of his bed to fumble with the pants he'd shucked before his shower, mind ricocheting into awareness in the middle of some hazy dream that is too blue and too red in equal amounts. Max snores, loud and grating, and a plastic wrapper crackles between his fingers as he clumsily removes it and hits the bedside light approximately five times before he gets it to turn on to a level that isn't classified as 'eye searing'.

 

The writing on the thin plastic is neat, tiny, and almost cramped, scratched with a permanent marker and in all caps and in too many ways that don't seem like Raleigh at all.

 

'I still miss you.' it reads, smeared in the most bent parts, and Chuck's heart is lanced with a cold feeling of sadness that becomes tinged with curiosity and something muzzily warm, 'but I am happy.'

 

It doesn't mean he needs to treat Raleigh any differently, he thinks as he settles in for the second time to sleep, but sitting atop the Shatterdome one night doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

 

..

 

It starts to rain and it gets even colder, and everything seems monochromatic. Raleigh and Mako are instructed to do PR commentaries, and Chuck and Herc are told to tag along after the first few, and Chuck still gives his offering of split knuckles and a pinch of blood to the mechanic gods when he is free. He meets Raleigh off and on, here and there, for lunch in the mess or for flashes in the Jaeger hangar, and there is something that's infiltrated the blonde's happiness that is decidedly grey.

 

It rains and rains and rains and rains.

 

It isn't until the rain has stopped and Chuck and Herc are running late from some umpteenth interview that he discovers one Raleigh Becket, sound asleep over the work station in Striker Eureka's bay in the 'dome, with some blankets clumsily hung from whatever high surfaces it seemed as if he could reach. The structure is almost entirely unsound; corners of the long fabrics are anchored with books in some places, and heavy tools in others. But Raleigh looks comfortable enough, even with his the tiny furrow between his eyebrows, and it gives Chuck an idea.

 

He carefully deconstructs the fort that Raleigh made, snorting at the age old books that the blonde managed to find, and takes all of them plus some smudged pieces of scrap sheets from Striker's tech team to the roof of the Shatterdome. The wind bites at his cheeks and ears, but it feels better than the melancholy had previously; Chuck inhales deeply and gets to work when he finds an acceptable area where some structure required a jut upwards of the 'dome's roof.

 

Sheets are tucked into place, fastened with the proper clamps that are an age old and are scuffed on their orange pads and probably came from Australia with him, and are layered with just enough resistance to keep the chill from being unbearable.

 

He pats his palms on his pants and idles back into the dome with a thermos of coffee under an arm. Max tags along, peeling off from Herc with an excited woof, and his stumpy legs keep up easily with Chuck's stride.

 

"Hey." Chuck puts a hand on Raleigh's head, gentle and unwavering as if he'd leap up like Herc would at the slightest touch. "Rise 'n shine, raaaahleigh." Max does his part on Chuck's insistence, winding under Raleigh's feet and rubbing back and forth with a gleeful grin.

 

"Huhnm?" Raleigh blinks, slow and hazy, and rubs his face into the crook of his own arm before groaning. "Wh're 'm i?"

 

"The hangar, genius." Chuck snarks back lightly, giving Raleigh the approximation of the shoulder-bump that the blonde is always giving out, "C'mon, let's go."

 

It takes Raleigh less than ten seconds to get himself oriented and he smiles apologetically when his movements are slow. "My left side's pretty slow if I sleep weird." he shrugs, falling in step with Chuck and stretching his left arm above his head incrementally until the bones pop audibly. Their shoulders and arms brush every other step, and Chuck has to be imagining Max giving him the look.

 

"No worries, really. 's no rush." Chuck shrugs, elbowing the heavy door to the roof open with a wry smile at the expression of surprise that steals across Raleigh's face. "Move it, leadfoot. Some'a us have places to be."

 

"Like hell." Raleigh laughs, breathing in the cold as if it was euphoria itself, and stops when Chuck takes a seat in his better-than-Becket's blanket fort, complete with a tiny heater for warding off the impending nighttime frost. He blinks once and twice and thrice, and a nostalgic smile tilts the corners of his lips upwards as he follows. "Trying to show me up, eh Hansen?"

 

"Quit yer bitchin'." he Chuckles, and in making room for Max, the dog puts him right up next to Raleigh. Max makes a noise that sounds like 'hurff', and kicks his feet out with a smug sigh, and Chuck just shakes his head while elbowing Raleigh when the blonde's expression goes a little blank. "Hey, tell me about the stars."

 

"You like those things?" Raleigh asks automatically, head tilting to the side, and Chuck shrugs.

 

"Dunno. Explain 'em to me and I’ll see if I do." he replies easily, extending his legs and resting on his hands. Raleigh pulls a knee up and situates himself into a position that can't be comfortable, and the blue in his eyes is warm like the oceans of Sydney over a decade ago as he launches into stories about stars and gods and mythos.

 

Something shifts after a story about Orion, and Chuck finds himself silently moving to acquiesce Raleigh's new positioning. Raleigh's back is comfortably slumped against Chuck's side, and his arm has managed to rest against the plane of Raleigh's stomach. It's warm and cozy, and Raleigh is gesturing and smiling like Christmas has come early and Kaiju don't writhe at the edges of the breach. Raleigh's arms sweep upwards and outwards and every which way, his hands bumping into Chuck's off and on, and Chuck cannot tamp down the tiny smile that edges onto his face at the sheer animation in the Raleigh Becket curled against him.

 

Zeus makes constellations and something is said about Sirius and the North Star, and Chuck is overcome with bliss in such a strange way that he finds himself smothering Raleigh's face in kisses that are gentler than a midsummer's breeze. A muffled sound is coaxed from Raleigh's throat at the contact, one part surprised and another part content, and he responds positively, eagerly, to the contact.

 

One of Raleigh's hands comes up to rest atop Chuck's already present hand on the blonde's cheek, and he mirrors Chuck by resting his free hand at the base of the Australian's skull. Raleigh's lips are chapped and chewed, but his mouth is a heat of acceptance and emotion that makes sense of the feelings that had been bouncing around in Chuck's ribcage. He breathes into Chuck's mouth, and Chuck tastes Anchorage and the most immense sense of loss and snow that he's never seen before. Chuck exhales into Raleigh and Raleigh is left with the feel of sand in his teeth and Australia in his heart and another hole in his heart that matches up inversely with the one left by Yancy.

 

"'I still miss you'," Chuck quotes, muffled, against Raleigh's smiling mouth, and clutches the other pilot closer while peppering kisses up and down his nose, "'but I am happy'."

 

"But I am happy." Raleigh agrees quietly, breathlessly, and grins an entire universe's worth of stars into their kisses.


End file.
